How Artificial Intelligence Can Fight Air Pollution In China

An anonymous reader writes: IBM is testing a new way to help fix Beijing's air pollution problem with artificial intelligence. Like many other cities across the country, the capital is surrounded by many coal burning factories. However, the air quality on a day-to-day basis can vary because of a number of reasons like industrial activity, traffic congestion, and the weather. IBM is testing a computer system capable of learning to predict the severity of air pollution several days in advance using large quantities of data from several different models. "We have built a prototype system which is able to generate high-resolution air quality forecasts, 72 hours ahead of time," says Xiaowei Shen, director of IBM Research China. "Our researchers are currently expanding the capability of the system to provide medium- and long-term (up to 10 days ahead) as well as pollutant source tracking, 'what-if' scenario analysis, and decision support on emission reduction actions."

Comments

Re:regular old intelligence

[Dutch Gun]

The actual solution is "stop spewing so much shit into the air", but that's hard to do and very expensive. Temporarily shutting down a smokestack here or there where the problem is worst isn't going to do anything substantial. This is about feel-good solutions, so the Chinese politicians can claim they're doing something, and IBM can get a contract.

I'm trying to figure out what good does it do someone to get a 72-hour forecast of how crappy the air will be? Can local residents stop breathing for a day or two until it clears up? Can they not go in to work and live in a filtered bubble at home? Uh... right. Instead, what will happen is the government will shut down nearby powerplants and limit gas-powered vehicle traffic, so those poor residents will have crappy air AND will be inconvenienced at the same time.

Color me skeptical. I wish them well in cleaning things up, but it's going to take more than a smart computer to make that happen.

Or ...

[hey!]

they could just give their environmental regulators the authority to enforce their existing environmental laws.

In the film Under the Dome, Chinese journalist Chai Jing astonishes a Chinese audience with a film clip from California where Cal DoT stops a truck and actually checks that it has all the mandatory safety and emissions equipment. That never happens in China. China has tough emissions standards on paper, but the law is written so that the regulators don't have any enforcement powers. So Chinese manufacturers simply slap stickers on vehicles claiming they have all the mandatory emissions equipment without installing any of it. Technically this is a crime, but the law's written so there's literally nothing anyone can do about it.

And if you don't think environmental regulations make a difference, this is what New York looked like in 1970. Note that that isn't a sepia tinted black and white photo, it's true color. Granted it shows an exceptionally bad day, but before the Clean Air Act got strengthened in the mid 70s bad smog was pretty common. If you look at pictures of American cities from the 70s you'd think that photo technology of the day put a blue or yellow haze on stuff in the distance (like this). It wasn't the film, cities actually looked that way a lot of the time.

Predicting bad pollution days isn't "fighting" pollution, it's living with it. If you want to fight pollution you've got to stop people from polluting. You've got to catch them at it, fine them, and in some cases throw them in jail. Pollution like they have in China is nothing short of manslaughter on a national scale. 1.6 million people die every year from it.